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Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Sauropod Gallery

Welcome to yet another of Life's Time Capsules, this time it is...

Sauropods the largest animals that ever lived on land. They may also have had in their ranks the longest creatures to have evolved!
They are among the most famous of Dinosaurs, and despite being strictly plant eaters themselves were the close relatives of the meat eating Dinosaurs! Evolving relatively early in the history of Dinosaurs, the Sauropods would endure till the end of the Mesozoic making them one of the most successful Dinosaur groups of all. They came in all shapes and sizes, and lived on every continent.
So join us now to this effort to bring this giants of the past back to life in art form...
[If you are still working on a piece, it is not too late! We have just discovered an html trick that negates our previous formatting issue with uploading new pictures. So we will add them as they come in]
[To all our contributors, we apologize in advance if any small formatting issues surrounding your specific piece. Due to the sheer number of entries into this gallery we have been scrambling to get this gallery posted in time. If there are any errors or text omissions from your piece please just let us know in the comment section or via an email to artevolved@gmail.com and we will fix it as soon as we can!]

First off, this is a hopeless w.i.p. - so much to do (scales, normal map, artefact removal, illustration in scene)! Just didn't want to miss out. I laid out my diplodocus inspired by Nima. (Yes, I know this is cheating.) Anyway, that's a 2m measure there in black and white.
I thought I'd list some of the assumptions I've integrated into this guy, and some of the questions that have come up during the artEvolved challenge:
- the scutes at the tail are inspired by the whip-crack communication theory, just instead of whipping (and possibly breaking) the tail, it whistles. Also gets in the face of predators.
- neck posture... not quite as extreme as MarkWitton's, but I think this would be a standard position... could go higher
- gait; I think this would be about the extreme gait. Tried to base this with trackway images, but didn't have enough time to be very diligent about it.
- teeth/lips/cheek; I tried to create a bite that would shear while closed while respecting that weird skeleton. 3D is really helpful here because it keeps you from cheating. Rotation point respects (I hope) the skull reference
- nasal; I just followed the latest research here... tried to artistically make it look plausible but have no idea really.
- coloring; even though this is a quick hack, I want a largely monotonous coloring with just a hint of patterns from earlier, smaller times. This is too brownish. I'll make it more grey in the next version

This is an pen-and-ink reconstruction based on this photo, of the new Berlin Museum für Naturkunde Giraffatitan mount (previously Brachiosaurus). This beast held a special place in my heart when I visited it in 2002. Now, I have to go back and see the new updated mount.

Cetiosaur herds roamed the mudflats of Oxfordshire in England in the late Jurassic. Strange to think of these 18 metre long creatures wandering an area now covered in equally majestic academic architecture.

Argyrosaurussuperbus - finally after over a century since its discovery, this is the first and ONLY hi-fi restoration of this giant sauropod, one of seven known colossal titanosaur species in the 100-foot range. Shown with forelimb scaled up slightly from crushed holotype, blue-shaded bones represent missing material.

A pair of Giraffatitan adults squabble amongst their herd.
In this piece I am trying show a brief snapshot of Sauropod behaviour that is rarely depicted. Typically Sauropods are shown as gentle giants, but I don't believe they would have been in reality.
For starters they are so close to Theropods in lineage, the two no doubt shared some inherent instincts. We know Theropods often fought with each other in social settings, why not Sauropods too? More importantly Sauropods had such a small brain size compared to their body mass, I find it unlikely they had the mental capacity for complex social behaviour that would displace violence as an efficient conflict resolver.
Granted at the same time I'm not suggesting they were not constantly trying to kill each other. Simply there was likely little more fire and passion to them then the lumbering docile titans we often picture them as...

Inspired by the incredible mount at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I decided to recreate it, giving it a touch of lovely Vancouver weather. A barosaur is rearing up to protect it's baby from a menacing allosaur. This piece was created live on Bond's Blog during the ART Evolved liveblogging challenge.

I've decided to be conservative with the neck elevation. Personally, I think the neck was maintained in al pa horizontosture mainly, but the elevation was indeed in its range of motion, so, let's go with a 45º neck this time.

Puertasaurus reuili: the first hi-fi restoration ever done of the NEW "biggest" dinosaur. It likely exceeds Argentinosaurus in both length and mass. Triple axial view, all published fossil material is re-figured fully restored and uncrushed.

Europasaurus holgeri, a derived, island dwelling, dwarf macronarian from the Late Jurassic of Germany. Pen and color pencil on paper

With that we come to the end of yet another Time Capsule...
In just over a month's time, on January. 7th 2010 we launch our next gallery on Palaeo-Environments. The details are here, but this is a nearly free for all gallery and will be accepting nearly any palaeo-art content you send.
Please send those submissions to artevolved@gmail.com (with any desired accompanying text blurb and your website or blog's link), and see you back hopefully no later then just after the New Year...

26 comments:

Wow! Congratulations everyone! If I may say so, I feel Nima has cleaned up in the reconstruction category. (Love those voluminous bodies). Lots of contenders for scenic... I hope to finish mine still and will post at least a link when I do so, many factors have contributed to me not managing the deadline. Sigh.

Thanks David! I was actually planning to do many more reconstructions of those voluminous titanosaurs... But time was scarce!

I still have an Argentinosaurus in the works, and the following are also slated for reconstruction:

AndesaurusParalititanAntarctosaurusFutalognkosaurusIsisaurusRapetosaurus (Mark Hallet will not have the final word on that one!)NemegtosaurusQuaesitosaurusDiamantinosaurusAlamosaurus

Needless to say there will be a lot of fun guesswork involved with some of these...

And maybe a few non-titanosaurs as well - Euhelopus and Erketu - and some more primitive ones like Spinophorosaurus. I want to get a morisson scene with AMphicoelias done, and I'm already halfway on another morrison scene with Brachiosaurus and Haplocanthosaurus.

- compared to Nima's schematics in particular, its interesting to compare leg position and body volume. Nima's are wider apart. I'm going from experience as a creature animator, trying to get the legs towards center-of-gravity... at least in pose. Is there any research about this?

- Body volume... love Nima's take. That boxy digestive factory. Mine is more tapered/rounded... I think there must be a gaseous bloated mass there, with a fairly active 'exhaust pipe'... and modeled the form to allow for the (assumed) more narrow leg motions... the shape seen from above just arose from these factors. Any way of approaching probability / feasibility of these two ideas?

@ everyone: I'm inspired to be a part of this gallery! Its very cool to see the various schematic and artistic reconstructions.

Thanks for all the compliments, David! I am also a fan of the wide-bodied sauropods.

If I understand correctly, you are asking if my sauropods' wider "digestive factory" bodies and wide-spaced legs are accurate to the evidence?

They are in this case, because I drew two titanosaurs: Argyrosaurus and Puertasaurus. And titanosaurs are well known for having very plump bodies, wide ribcages, and wide-gauge legs compared to other sauropods (this is based on both skeletal evidence and footprints).

As for the boxy-ness, I actually tried to keep that to a minimum but I drew several cross-sections in the initial sketches to approximate the shape of the widest ribs. Some of Puertasaurus's boxy look is due to the speculative row of osteoderms I put on it. As for Argyrosaurus I just gave it a deep, flat-sided rib-cage like many brachiosaurs and basal titanosaurs - only wider and bigger. Isisaurus seems to have the same sort of body design, and on the cirscumstantial side, its forelimb proportions are just a very exaggerated version of Argyrosaurus'. (As strange as it seems, Argy's humerus IS a good bit longer than his radius and ulna - and sadly there's not much else of him to compare with other dinosaurs!)

Puertasaurus in particular was probably the fattest of them all, judging by the extreme width of the published dorsal vertebra, especially those huge wing-like zygapophyses - which must have supported a VERY wide rib cage. Even its neck was probably the widest one on record!

Its older relative Futalognkosaurus also was very wide, as indicated by its colossal 8-foot wide sacrum! (I'm guesstimating here; you can see it for yourself on SV-POW)

By contrast, Diplodocids, Camarasaurs, Euhelopodids and even the huge-bodied Brachiosaurs all had much narrower rib cages than Titanosaurs. Some of those titanosaurs practically converged on Ankylosaurs for sheer proportional torso width and dorsal flatness.

Your piece is a Diplodocus, which belongs to a much more slender family that had a much narrower body and leg spacing. So we are both correct, because we illustrated different families of sauropods for our multi-view reconstructions.

Just a little tip though: I did notice that yours is a BIT wide for a Diplodocus. And the massive look it has combined with the longer neck makes it look a bit more like Supersaurus (which was not really wide-gauge, just bigger). BTW, When I look at Scott Hartman's Supersaurus skeletal, I see extremely narrow gauge arms with the thumb claws practically touching. When I look at your Diplodocus I see pretty much the same thing, but the hands are bit too bulky IMO, and they make the thing look wider-gauge than it really is. If it's not the final version, I'd suggest making the body and hands narrower.

@Nima... I was under the impression that supersaurus was discovered to be a diplodocus. Just a particularly big one. If not, then... this would be a supersaurus. /me blinks. And goes off to rename everything. Lots to learn.

about the wide-set legs on titanosaurs: it would be a very interesting task to animate a walk. How did they keep their c-o-g under the planted feet? Will have to try that

<<@Nima... I was under the impression that supersaurus was discovered to be a diplodocus. Just a particularly big one. If not, then... this would be a supersaurus.>>

Actually, that was Seismosaurus. Seismosaurus was recently reclassified as a large diplodocus (though its ischial curve looks very different).

Supersaurus (s. vivinae) is still firmly its own valid species. In fact, it's recently been shown with cladistics that Supersaurus is closer to Apatosaurus than to diplodocus.

As for the titanosaurs- they may have just been fast striders or they kept their feet close to the ground (no crazy lifts and wrist-bends like you see in Greg Paul skeletals...) but of course I and many others violate this ASSUMPTION...

A massive range of styles in this gallery. I particularly like the illustrative style of Bryan Baugh and his bold use of colour. Strong compostions.

Teddy cookswell and Bryan Baugh have achieved a clever perspective to suggest the vastness of Sauropods.

Good to see some 3D work included. Delicate and skillfull paper sculptures by Jared Needed and Brian Blacknicks nostalgic King Kong scene with the curled lip Brontosaurus. Very clever and adds some humour to the gallery.

Check out Brian Blacknick's blog - it's quite interesting and imformative on how he creates his sculptues.

"1. It should be obvious to all right-thinking people that this is the single greatest piece of artwork ever executed by anyone, anywhere, at any time in history. The only way it could ever be improved upon would be if more brachiosaurs were discovered and incorporated into a new draft."Mike Taylorhttp://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/more-out-than-in/#comment-5417